“You’re right, you’re right.” She reverses out of their parking space and turns down the volume on the speakers. “We should go to school. How’s school going?” she asks. Bodhi hasn’t said much about Miss Ollie. In fact, Rhea hasn’t been able to get a firm sense of how much he understands about what happened to her. In some ways, he’s such an old soul, but in others, he’s slow on the uptake.
“It’s all right.”
“What do you mean it’s all right?” She exaggerates his ho-hum tone. “I thought you loved school. I thought you wanted to be a teacher when you grow up. Isn’t that right?” Did it bother her that this new future occurred to him only after having Miss Ollie? A little, but that was before. Situations change. Rhea has changed.
It’s a less-than-five-minute drive from the shopping center to school. She goes the speed limit, braking at a stoplight. Rhea gives Bodhi his time to answer because that’s what the positive-parenting YouTube channels encourage. Bodhi doesn’t have to like school. He doesn’t have to like any of the same things she does. That’s okay. He’s his own person. She is her own person. And Rhea can be cool about that.
“It was me,” he says when she’s pulling into the school parking lot.
Rhea goes cold. She chooses the first spot she sees, one far away from the entrance where no other parents have been desperate enough to park yet, and brakes too hard at the median. Their bodies sway forward before being pressed back into the seats with an irritating jolt.
“It was … you?”
No, no, no what no no no.
Of all things her mind chooses to dredge up, it’s the memory of the day Bodhi was born. The first thing she recalls after she woke up from the sedatives is that he was clean. She had a clean baby. No gunk or slippery goo, no sign that he’d been swimming around her insides earlier that day. She stared at Bodhi’s closed eyelids and felt the world both expand and contract simultaneously.
The aftermath of the anesthesia was still giving her the shakes and she held her sleeping son to her chest as she clenched her teeth to keep from chattering him awake. Later that day, the female doctor who delivered Bodhi came by to check on Rhea during her rounds. Marcus, who arrived and was biting his tongue about not getting the call sooner, thanked the doctor for keeping Rhea and Bodhi safe. Rhea looked away.
She hated the doctor like it was her God-given right to. The doctor paused.
“There are no perfect decisions when it comes to becoming a parent, that’s true at every stage,” said the doctor. It was the closest thing to an apology Rhea would ever get. “I should know. I’ve got three kids of my own. Welcome to the club.”
And Rhea thought that maybe with three kids, this doctor could afford to make mistakes, but for Rhea, there would only be one Bodhi, she knew that from the start, and so she would do it perfectly from then on.
But now, her eyes frantically search around her tin box of a car for a solution, something to stop the train. She might even wish that doctor back if it meant someone could put her to sleep, anesthetize her against what her son is about to say next. Wake her up when it’s over. Her heart hammers at her breast.
“What is?” she asks tentatively, praying she misheard.
“It was me.” Bodhi starts smudging lines onto the window glass with the tip of his finger, enthralled in the shapes he’s creating.
“What do you mean? What’s you?” She unbuckles her seatbelt and twists to look at him full-on.
“You know.” He glances over at her, ducking his head to prompt her. “The one who went Number Two at school.”
Her fingers fly to her mouth. She’s on the verge of either laughing with relief—did she really think her son could have killed his preschool teacher?—or crying because what the fuck. Okay. Okay … She recalibrates. This is bad, but it could have been worse. The sun floods through her windshield and the whole car smells like grease now that the engine’s been cut. Start over. Did Bodhi just—did he say—“When?” she asks.
“Every time.” This in the same sweet boy’s voice that wakes her up in the mornings. So. Like, no. Uh-uh. Rhea doesn’t think so. She kneads her forehead with her fingertips. She’s going to get to the bottom of this. Just no, no way.
“You went in the cubby next to Mrs. Tokem’s purse?”
He nods.
“You went at the bottom of the slide?”
“And in the book nook and the block station.” His lower lip puckers thoughtfully. “And in the flowerbed next to the playhouse but nobody knows about that one.”
“Bodhi Anderson.” Whoooaaakkkkayyyy. Her eyes are rolling around in her head like that triangle in a Magic 8 Ball. She is feeling a whole heap of feelings, she knows that. A fresh, steaming heap of them. “You did not do that.” She points her finger at him. Points it. Rhea doesn’t point her finger at her son. So, you know, things are happening. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Miss Ollie says we are never supposed to keep secrets from our parents. Only surprises. Surprises are different because they’re secrets set on snooze.” He lifts his shoulders to his ears.
Is her child an alien? Was he body snatched? Is that a possibility she should explore?
“When’d she tell you that?” Rhea demands.
“When she taught us about stranger danger.” Bodhi goes back to his smudge drawings, like crude, oily-palmed cave art.
“So you were just … waiting to tell me?” Rhea kneads her forehead, trying to make herself come to terms with reality the way a woman might be forced to accept her husband has a secret family or is an accused sexual harasser. She’s been living with the Little Shitter. Poodini. The Bowel Movement Bandit. In her house. Her son. “Oh my god, I don’t understand why you would do this.” She explodes and the crumpled remains of her fast-food breakfast scatter onto the passenger seat. “Were you not able to make it to a toilet?”
“I could.”
“Was it an accident?” She has never seen a positive-parenting YouTube video about this.
“No.”
“Were you mad?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, fuck.”
“Fuck,” Bodhi repeats solemnly.
“Bodhi.” She shoots eyes. “I did not—” But please, someone finish that sentence for her because all she can think to do is drop her head on the steering wheel. What’s she supposed to do? Does she really think kids—heck, not just kids, parents—are going to be nice once they find out her son has been excreting all over their precious school? It might have been better if he did kill somebody. Nicknames are no joke. And that’s if they don’t kick him out, and her schedule cannot afford him getting kicked out of school right now.
Rhea hasn’t even started to google, but, hey, that’s coming. And Marcus. Shit, Marcus. Maybe she should call Bodhi in sick today.
The thought makes her to-do list weep. Terrene, my other precious baby, you need to crawl over and take the back seat—again. Because this Bodhi Thing is a thing-thing and she’s going to have to figure it out one way or another. She doesn’t get it. How did she screw this up? She still breastfeeds. She doesn’t yell. She bathes with Bodhi.